Some truly baffling takes on Red Tractor on this thread.
Red Tractor was set up as a voluntary scheme to guarantee food safety in the light of the BSE crisis.
It has obviously since expanded, but it's remit was never welfare much over and above the legal minimum (as dictated in the legally binding welfare codes of practice set out by government).
The idea was that if you were Red Tractor assured, you'd get a premium for your product (as a farmer). In reality, it doesn't work like that, in most sectors (esp pig, poultry and dairy), all Red Tractor does is buys you access to the main markets. If you produced any of these things and were not RT assured, you would really struggle to sell your produce at all. So; no premium there, then.
Farms are Inspected at least annually by RT, and it is the farmer, not anyone else who pays to be in the scheme.
It is a little less restrictive in sheep and beef. I was never RT assured, as I couldn't be arsed to pay to have someone to come and inspect my sheep/paperwork (in reality, they spend a lot of time looking at your paperwork), and the "premium" I would have got in market would have barely paid for my RT membership. I think, even back then, it cost £500 pa to be in Red Tractor.
This does not mean I didn't get inspected - Animal Health is the Government body responsible for this, who are part of Trading Standards.
I got inspected firstly when I went from 20 sheep as a hobby to 250 sheep when I decided to make a career of it, the increase in animals coming onto my holding triggers an inspection, apparently, and once again when I was having trouble with dog walkers on a down I rented, who decided that because I had the temerity to be putting up signs asking them to keep their dogs on leads around sheep, they would ring Animal Health. The Animal Health people soon got sick of that though, having come a few times and found my sheep in good health, so the ended up just ringing me to let me know a complaint had been made in the end. I suppose they could have covertly inspected those sheep (and maybe they did) as a couple of footpaths ran right across that down.
So, actually, if farms have grazing animals and/or animals outdoors and footpaths, its a piece of pee to inspect them. I know DEFRA use drones now to inspect cropping areas and map them against subsidy claims (eg for wildflower margins etc) to catch out those trying to play the system.
It surprises me not that following inspection (I'm assuming by Animal Health and not RT, because all RT farms are inspected every year, at least once, and if hey fail, they lose RT standards), because people call them for all manner of spurious shite - I've had them called because lambs were bleating (they do that, its how they find their mums), I've had them called because my sheep had been shorn recently and they thought that they might get cold (in July), Ive had idiots pick up perfectly decent lambs saying that they had been abandoned, when they hadn't, which means I'd then had to bottle rear them because I had no idea where their dam was on that down to put them back (once lambs get to being a few days old, the ewe will go off and graze and leave them in some long grass or in some scrub or something and come back for them later). Tip for walkers: if you find a lamb/lambs happily curled up asleep in some long grass they are probably fine. if you disturb them and they get up and they then stretch, they are well fed. Unfed lambs tend to wander round bleating because they are hungry, they will also have a "pinched" appearance because they have an empty tummy.
www.independent.co.uk
plantbasednews.org
www.theguardian.com
www.leicestershire.gov.uk
animalequality.org
www.thebureauinvestigates.com
